Food brands and restaurants want to build greater trust with their customers to earn their loyalty. Consumers want greater insights into the origins of the food they eat. And growers and producers want to improve their financial security by exploring secondary revenue streams.

These issues, though seemingly separate, were ones DIAL Ventures, a venture studio operated out of Purdue University that builds AgriFood-focused technology startups at scale with High Alpha Innovation, believed could be solved by a single solution that could:

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• Enable America’s farmers to share stories about their work producing the meat, plants, grains, fruits, and vegetables we consume.
• Allow consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands, retailers and quick-service restaurants to leverage those stories in their marketing programs.
• Educate the public about farming with authentic, genuine, user-generated content through videos directly from agricultural growers.

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With the startup concept in place, all that was left for DIAL and the High Alpha Innovation team was to find the ideal entrepreneur to take on the founding CEO role.

Scott Nelson, a veteran marketing executive with experience working for both major, household-name brands and emerging technology companies, was a DIAL Innovation Fellow who took part in the exploratory stages of our venture-building program for Make Hay.

Given his closeness to the problem we were trying to solve, hands-on experience in talking directly with CPG brands in Indiana and Minnesota during his DIAL Residency, and history of executing customer-centric marketing strategies, Scott was built to start and run this company.

We recently spoke with Scott to get insights into his award-winning marketing background at well-known corporations, how his marketing and tech experience helps inform the development of the Make Hay B2B platform, and what the future holds for the ag-focused startup.

What other companies have you led? How did your work at those businesses impact your decision to join Make Hay?

Scott: Panera was the start of it all. That’s where I led the "100% Clean Food” movement as the head of brand marketing there.

Panera was really the first to do food transparency at scale. Our customers cared and wanted (demanded, really) to know what they were putting in their bodies, where the food came from, and what the ingredients were. So, we made that a top priority for our marketing team.

I've been working in the marketing and innovation spaces and overall content creation for more than 20 years at iconic, world-class brands like Nike, Inc./Converse, Rakuten and some highly innovative early-stage startups.

This desire to create a more authentic and efficient content platform like Make Hay — especially in today's world of digital and social media — was something always tugging at me.

Transparency, authenticity, and efficiency is the name of the game for today's marketing departments (or at least it should be). I’m bringing that mentality to Make Hay, aiming to give a voice to America’s farming community while also helping consumers and CPG brands access and learn from their stories.

I've been doing influencer marketing in various forms dating back to my sneaker days, so I’ve gotten to see the world of the creator economy go through different expressions and generations.

I could argue that growers and producers are the original influencers, when it comes to the food industry: No farmers, no food. All these inputs helped inspire Make Hay.

Share your thoughts on your initial meetings with HAI and DIAL. What convinced you the role was the right fit?

Scott: The DIAL team executes an amazing, structured Fellowship program when building new companies that guides Fellows and opens new doors to their ideas and overall thinking. 

High Alpha Innovation brought the support system to help facilitate that Residency program and ensure we uncovered the insights and data necessary to take action on the Make Hay idea.

The collaborative work enabled us to bring the company to life and go to market. It's a good tandem. More importantly, both organizations are comprised of great people who are trying to solve important problems in the food and agriculture space — Make Hay being the latest.

Tell us about the Make Hay platform. How do you envision it benefiting farmers, food brands, and consumers?

Scott: Farmers not only have a larger platform to tell their stories and provide their perspectives, but also the opportunity to earn an additional revenue source (without having to leave the farm) and get connected closer to the brands and end consumers.

If we can make digital storytelling a regular part of the daily farm operation, we can do some amazing things.  

Brands, meanwhile, not only have a new piece of software that can enable efficiencies across their organizations (time, budget, resources, etc.), but they also now have access to real, raw, authentic content from the farmers themselves.  

And consumers now get to know more about where it all starts and the faces behind their food.

Transparency wins every time.

Make Hay is already impacting the AgriFood industry and has the attention of notable CPG brands. What are you most proud of to date? What excites you moving forward?

Scott: We now have a piece of technology that is working and making a difference. We have farmers onboard, and the interest of the agriculture industry at large continues to grow.

We’ve created a brand that is certainly new to the ag space — one that seems to be turning lots of heads. We’re also getting meetings and intrigue from major leaders across the leading CPG, food-service, and retail organizations.

And the team we’ve put together is top-notch, with people who have high-profile backgrounds and all bring different and disruptive thinking to an industry that desperately needs it.

Can you speak to any updates on product development or strategic partnerships that Make Hay has made recently? What does the near-term future hold for the business?

Scott: Well, first, we were just named a top-10 AgriFood company by the podcast The Modern Acre. That’s nice to be on the same list with brands like Sweetgreen and fellow DIAL/HAI-created startup Gripp.

Meanwhile, our product gets better every week, it seems, thanks to the work of my partner John Running. Our first pilot with an organization that offers the world’s first bee vaccine has gone very well, with us getting various, diverse pieces of content from farmers all over the U.S.

We kick off another pilot with the Indiana Farm Bureau in late 2024, and have numerous other ones lined up with CPGs and restaurants nearing the finish line.

And we’ve formed a Producer Advisory Council with some of the top farming creators across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, which further helps with trust, authenticity, and overall validation and support from ag communities across the country.